Hic arcus ac tela, quibus olim in magno illo Superum tumultu princeps armorum Michael confixit auctorem proditionis; hic fulmina humanæ mentis terror. In nubibus armatas bello legiones instruam, atque inde pro re nata auxiliares ad terram copias evocabo. Hic mihi Cælites, quos esse ferunt elementorum tutelares, prima ilia corpora miscebunt.
(sect. 4.) Ed. ]
Lecture XI Asiatic and Greek Mythologies Robinson Crusoe Use of Works of Imagination in Education 1
A confounding of God with Nature, and an incapacity of finding
unity in the manifold and infinity in the individual, these
are the origin of polytheism. The most perfect instance of this
kind of theism is that of early Greece; other nations seem to
have either transcended, or come short of, the old Hellenic
standard, a mythology in itself fundamentally allegorical,
and typical of the powers and functions of nature, but
subsequently mixed up with a deification of great men and
hero-worship, so that finally the original idea became
inextricably combined with the form and attributes of some
legendary individual. In Asia, probably from the greater unity of
the government and the still surviving influence of patriarchal
tradition, the idea of the unity of God, in a distorted
reflection of the Mosaic scheme, was much more generally
preserved; and accordingly all other super or ultra-human beings
could only be represented as ministers of, or rebels against, his
will. The Asiatic genii and fairies are, therefore, always
endowed with moral qualities, and distinguishable as malignant or
benevolent to man. It is this uniform attribution of fixed moral
qualities to the supernatural agents of eastern mythology that
particularly separates them from the divinities of old
Greece.
Yet it is not altogether improbable that in the Samothracian or
Cabeiric mysteries the link between the Asiatic and Greek popular
schemes of mythology lay concealed. Of these mysteries there are
conflicting accounts, and, perhaps, there were variations of
doctrine in the lapse of ages and intercourse with other systems.
But, upon a review of all that is left to us on this subject in
the writings of the ancients, we may, I think, make out thus much
of an interesting fact, that Cabiri, impliedly at
least, meant socii, complices, having a hypostatic or
fundamental union with, or relation to, each other; that these
mysterious divinities were, ultimately at least, divided into a
higher and lower triad; that the lower triad, primi quia
infimi, consisted of the old Titanic deities or powers of
nature, under the obscure names of Axieros, Axiokersos,
and Axiokersa, representing symbolically different
modifications of animal desire or material action, such as
hunger, thirst, and fire, without consciousness; that the higher
triad, ultimi quia superiores, consisted of Jupiter,
(Pallas, or Apollo, or Bacchus, or Mercury, mystically called
Cadmilos) and Venus, representing, as before, the
or reason, the or word or communicative power, and the
or love;-that the Cadmilos or Mercury, the
manifested, communicated, or sent, appeared not only in his
proper person as second of the higher triad, but also as a
mediator between the higher and lower triad, and so there were
seven divinities; and, indeed, according to some authorities, it
might seem that the Cadmilos acted once as a mediator of
the higher, and once of the lower, triad, and that so there were
eight Cabeiric divinities. The lower or Titanic powers being
subdued, chaos ceased, and creation began in the reign of the
divinities of mind and love; but the chaotic gods still existed
in the abyss, and the notion of evoking them was the origin, the
idea, of the Greek necromancy.
These mysteries, like all the others, were certainly in
connection with either the Phoenician or Egyptian systems,
perhaps with both. Hence the old Cabeiric powers were soon made
to answer to the corresponding popular divinities; and the lower
triad was called by the uninitiated, Ceres, Vulcan or Pluto, and
Proserpine, and the Cadmilos became Mercury. It is not
without ground that I direct your attention, under these
circumstances, to the probable derivation of some portion of this
most remarkable system from patriarchal tradition, and to the
connection of the Cabeiri with the Kabbala.
The Samothracian mysteries continued in
celebrity till some time after the commencement of the Christian
era. 2 But they gradually sank with the rest
of the ancient system of mythology, to which, in fact, they did
not properly belong. The peculiar doctrines, however, were
preserved in the memories of the initiated, and handed down by
individuals. No doubt they were propagated in Europe, and it is
not improbable that Paracelsus received many of his opinions from
such persons, and I think a connection may be traced between him
and Jacob Behmen.
The Asiatic supernatural beings are all produced by imagining an
excessive magnitude, or an excessive smallness combined with
great power; and the broken associations, which must have given
rise to such conceptions, are the sources of the interest which
they inspire, as exhibiting, through the working of the
imagination, the idea of power in the will. This is delightfully
exemplified in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and
indeed, more or less, in other works of the same kind. In all
these there is the same activity of mind as in dreaming, that is
an exertion of the fancy in the combination and
recombination of familiar objects so as to produce novel and
wonderful imagery. To this must be added that these tales cause
no deep feeling of a moral kind whether of religion or
love; but an impulse of motion is communicated to the mind
without excitement, and this is the reason of their being so
generally read and admired.
I think it not unlikely that the Milesian Tales contained
the germs of many of those now in the Arabian Nights; indeed it
is scarcely possible to doubt that the Greek empire must have
left deep impression on the Persian intellect. So also many of
the Roman Catholic legends are taken from Apuleius. In that
exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, the allegory is of no
injury to the dramatic vividness of the tale. It is evidently a
philosophic attempt to parry Christianity with a
quasi-Platonic account of the fall and redemption of the
soul.
The charm of De Foe's works, especially of Robinson
Crusoe, is founded on the same principle. It always
interests, never agitates. Crusoe himself is merely a
representative of humanity in general; neither his intellectual
nor his moral qualities set him above the middle degree of
mankind; his only prominent characteristic is the spirit of
enterprise and wandering, which is, nevertheless, a very common
disposition. You will observe that all that is wonderful in this
tale is the result of external circumstances of things
which fortune brings to Crusoe's hand.
Footnote
1: Partly from Mr. Green's note. Ed.
return to footnote mark
Footnote
2: In the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 18, Germanicus
attempted to visit Samothrace; illum in regressu sacra
Samothracum visere nitentem obvii aquilones depulere. Tacit.
Ann. II. e. 54. Ed.
return to footnote mark
Notes on Robinson Crusoe 1
(Vol. i. p. 17.)
But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason, and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open.
I smiled to myself at the sight of this money: "O drug!" said I aloud, &c. However, upon second thoughts, I took it away; and wrapping all this in a piece of canvass, &c.
(P. 111)
And I must confess, my religious thankfulness to God's providence began to abate too, upon the discovering that all this was nothing but what was common; though I ought to have been as thankful for so strange and unforeseen a providence, as if it had been miraculous.
(P. 126.)
The growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my Journal, had, at first, some little influence upon me, and began to affect me with seriousness, as long as I thought it had something miraculous in it, &c.
(P. 141.)
To think that this was all my own, that I was king and lord of all this country indefeasibly, &c.
(P. 223.) I considered that as I could not foresee what the ends of divine wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute his sovereignty, who, as I was his creature, had an undoubted right, by creation, to govern and dispose of me absolutely as he thought fit, &c.
Doth it our reason's mutinies appease
To say, the potter may his own clay mould
To every use, or in what shape he please,
At first not counsell'd, nor at last controll'd?
Power's hand can neither easy be, nor strict
To lifeless clay, which ease nor torment knows,
And where it cannot favour or afflict,
It neither justice or injustice shows.
But souls have life, and life eternal too:
Therefore, if doom'd before they can offend,
It seems to show what heavenly power can do,
But does not in that deed that power commend.
(Death of Astragon. st. 88, &c. P. 232-3.)
And this I must observe with grief too, that the discomposure of my mind had too great impressions also upon the religious parts of my thoughts, praying to God being properly an act of the mind, not of the body.
(P. 244.)
That this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practised in America.
(P. 249.)
That I shall not discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits, &c.
(P. 254.)
The place I was in was a most delightful cavity or grotto of its kind, as could be expected, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry and level, and had a sort of small loose gravel on it, &c.
(P. 308.)
I entered into a long discourse with him about the devil, the original of him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man, the reason of it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world to be worshipped instead of God, &c.
(Vol. ii. p. 3.)
I have often heard persons of good judgment say, ... that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing, a ghost walking, and the like, &c.
(P. 9.)
She was, in a few words the stay of all my affairs, the centre of all my enterprises, &c.
(P. 67.)
The ungrateful creatures began to be as insolent and troublesome as before, &c.
(P. 82.)
That hardened villain was so far from denying it, that he said it was true, and him they would do it still before they had done with them.
Lecture XII Dreams Apparitions Alchemists Personality of the Evil Being Bodily Identity
It is a general, but, as it appears to me, a mistaken opinion,
that in our ordinary dreams we judge the objects to be real. I
say our ordinary dreams; because as to the night-mair the
opinion is to a considerable extent just. But the night-mair is
not a mere dream, but takes place when the waking state of the
brain is recommencing, and most often during a rapid alternation,
a twinkling, as it were, of sleeping and waking; while
either from pressure on, or from some derangement in, the stomach
or other digestive organs acting on the external skin (which is
still in sympathy with the stomach and bowels,) and benumbing it,
the sensations sent up to the brain by double touch (that is,
when my own hand touches my side or breast,) are so faint as to
be merely equivalent to the sensation given by single touch, as
when another person's hand touches me. The mind, therefore, which
at all times, with and without our distinct consciousness, seeks
for, and assumes, some outward cause for every impression from
without, and which in sleep, by aid of the imaginative faculty,
converts its judgments respecting the cause into a personal image
as being the cause, the mind, I say, in this case, deceived
by past experience, attributes the painful sensation received to
a correspondent agent, an assassin, for instance, stabbing
at the side, or a goblin sitting on the breast. Add too that the
impressions of the bed, curtains, room, &c. received by the eyes
in the half-moments of their opening, blend with, and give
vividness and appropriate distance to, the dream image which
returns when they close again; and thus we unite the actual
perceptions, or their immediate reliques, with the phantoms of
the inward sense; and in this manner so confound the half-waking,
half-sleeping, reasoning power, that we actually do pass a
positive judgment on the reality of what we see and hear, though
often accompanied by doubt and self-questioning, which, as I have
myself experienced, will at times become strong enough, even
before we awake, to convince us that it is what it is
namely, the night-mair.
In ordinary dreams we do not judge the objects to be real;
we simply do not determine that they are unreal. The sensations
which they seem to produce, are in truth the causes and occasions
of the images; of which there are two obvious proofs: first, that
in dreams the strangest and most sudden metamorphoses do not
create any sensation of surprise: and the second, that as to the
most dreadful images, which during the dream were accompanied
with agonies of terror, we merely awake, or turn round on the
other side, and off fly both image and agony, which would be
impossible if the sensations were produced by the images. This
has always appeared to me an absolute demonstration of the true
nature of ghosts and apparitions such I mean of the tribe
as were not pure inventions. Fifty years ago, (and to this day in
the ruder parts of Great Britain and Ireland, in almost every
kitchen and in too many parlours it is nearly the same,) you
might meet persons who would assure you in the most solemn
manner, so that you could not doubt their veracity at least, that
they had seen an apparition of such and such a person, in
many cases, that the apparition had spoken to them; and they
would describe themselves as having been in an agony of terror.
They would tell you the story in perfect health. Now take the
other class of facts, in which real ghosts have appeared; I
mean, where figures have been dressed up for the purpose of
passing for apparitions: in every instance I have known or
heard of (and I have collected very many) the consequence has
been either sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a
brain fever. Whence comes the difference? evidently from this,
that in the one case the whole of the nervous system has
been by slight internal causes gradually and all together brought
into a certain state, the sensation of which is extravagantly
exaggerated during sleep, and of which the images are the mere
effects and exponents, as the motions of the weathercock are of
the wind; while in the other case, the image rushing
through the senses upon a nervous system, wholly unprepared,
actually causes the sensation, which is sometimes powerful enough
to produce a total check, and almost always a lesion or
inflammation. Who has not witnessed the difference in shock when
we have leaped down half-a-dozen steps intentionally, and that of
having missed a single stair. How comparatively severe the latter
is! The fact really is, as to apparitions, that the terror
produces the image instead of the contrary; for in omnem actum
perceptionis influit imaginatio, as says Wolfe.
O, strange is the self-power of the imagination when
painful sensations have made it their interpreter, or returning
gladsomeness or convalescence has made its chilled and evanished
figures and landscape bud, blossom, and live in scarlet, green,
and snowy white (like the fire-screen inscribed with the nitrate
and muriate of cobalt,) strange is the power to represent
the events and circumstances, even to the anguish or the triumph
of the quasi-credent soul, while the necessary conditions,
the only possible causes of such contingencies, are known to be
in fact quite hopeless; yea, when the pure mind would
recoil from the eve-lengthened shadow of an approaching hope, as
from a crime;-and yet the effect shall have place, and substance,
and living energy, and, on a blue islet of ether, in a whole sky
of blackest cloudage, shine like a firstling of creation!
To return, however to apparitions, and by way of an amusing
illustration of the nature and value of even contemporary
testimony upon such subjects, I will present you with a passage,
literally translated by my friend, Mr. Southey, from the well
known work of Bernal Dias, one of the companions of Cortes, in
the conquest of Mexico:
Here it is that Gomara says, that Francisco de Morla rode forward on a dappled grey horse, before Cortes and the cavalry came up, and that the apostle St. Iago, or St. Peter, was there. I must say that all our works and victories are by the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that in this battle there were for each of us so many Indians, that they could have covered us with handfuls of earth, if it had not been that the great mercy of God helped us in every thing. And it may be that he of whom Gomara speaks, was the glorious Santiago or San Pedro, and I, as a sinner, was not worthy to see him; but he whom I saw there and knew, was Francisco de Morla on a chestnut horse, who came up with Cortes. And it seems to me that now while I am writing this, the whole war is represented before these sinful eyes, just in the manner as we then went through it. And though I, as an unworthy sinner, might not deserve to see either of these glorious apostles, there were in our company above four hundred soldiers, and Cortes, and many other knights; and it would have been talked of and testified, and they would have made a church, when they peopled the town, which would have been called Santiago de la Vittoria, or San Pedro de la Vittoria, as it is now called, Santa Maria de la Vittoria. And if it was, as Gomara says, bad Christians must we have been, when our Lord God sent us his holy apostles, not to acknowledge his great mercy, and venerate his church daily. And would to God, it had been, as the Chronicler says! but till I read his Chronicle, I never heard such a thing from any of the conquerors who were there.